


lake michigan

by princesskay



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22720105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay
Summary: While on a case in Michigan, Bill and Holden get stranded when a blizzard hits. Their situation coaxes hidden feelings to the surface.
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Comments: 26
Kudos: 113





	lake michigan

**Author's Note:**

> My gift to Rococoa for the Discord Valentine's Day exchange. Inspired by [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uSGIxZlOek//)

**FRANKFORT, MICHIGAN**

February 1984

“I’m getting sick of this shithole.” Bill says, flicking the thin curtains back from the motel window to glare out at the snow-blanketed parking lot. 

Their rented vehicle is sitting underneath four inches of snow alone in the middle of the parking lot of this small, roadside hotel just a few miles from the airport. The white-gray stretch of the sky is void of planes at the moment, all of them grounded by a suffocating blizzard that’s extending well past it’s third day. Fat snowflakes rain from above in a steady pattern, gathering accumulation before his very eyes.

“I heard on the radio that it’s supposed to snow another three inches tonight.” Holden says, glancing up from the book in his lap. 

“Just great.” Bill mutters. “I can’t believe we’re stuck here.” 

“Maybe we should call Ted, have him pull some strings to get the private jet here.” Holden says, his tone half-amused despite Bill’s genuine frustration. 

Bill casts him a glare. “This isn’t funny.”

Holden sets his book aside to scan the cheap furnishings of the hastily acquired hotel room. “It could be worse.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I thought you liked my company.”

“Not this much.” Bill says, shuffling across the room to sink down on his own bed. 

The bed springs protest beneath his weight, a complaint he can agree with. They’d already spent three weeks here on a case, and he’d been looking forward to getting home and enjoying the weekend before the next round of interviews begins. They had arrived at the airport, tickets in hand, three days ago only to be forced into renting a motel when the flight was canceled due to blizzard conditions. The temporary lodging is starting to look like a week-long, unplanned vacation, though vacation isn’t the word Bill would have used to describe their situation. He’s starting to go just a little stir crazy. 

Bill turns on the television and lights a cigarette. Only a few channels are coming in over the staticky airwaves, and he’s stuck watching the  _ Happy Days  _ marathon - it’s either that or surrender to the mind-numbing boredom of staring down the frumpy, floral wallpaper peeling off at the top corners of the walls. 

That evening, Holden orders pizza delivery. The opening credits of  _ The Searchers  _ are just beginning to roll across the television screen when the driver knocks on their door. 

Holden tips the delivery boy generously, and kicks the door shut on the blast of arctic cold air seeping into the hotel room. 

“What’s this?” He asks, eyeing the television as he carries the pizza to where Bill is lounging on the bed. 

“John Wayne.” Bill says, “Please tell me you’ve seen this movie.”

“Sorry.” Holden says, “My mom is more of a Clark Gable lady.”

Bill scoffs, but his amusement quickly ends as Holden circles the bed to sit cross-legged next to him. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Your bed is closer to the TV.” Holden says, placing the pizza box between them. 

“Fine.” Bill mutters, shoving up against the pillows to swipe a slice of pizza. 

“It’s kind of like camp.” Holden says, casting him a faint smile. 

“Camp?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I don’t know what camp you went to, but when I was a kid, camping was out in the woods, in tents.” Bill says, “Not being stranded in a shitty, two-star hotel in Frankfort, Michigan.”

“Oh, well the kids have cabins these days.” Holden says, settling back against the pillows with a sigh. “We’re not in the Stone Ages anymore.”

“You’ve never seen John Wayne. You’ve never spent a week in a tent in the woods. I get it, I’m old.”

Holden smirks, and refocuses on the television. 

“Who’s that?” He asks, motioning at the character walking across the scene. 

“If you would shut your mouth and watch the movie you’d find out.” 

“Okay, fine.” Holden says, holding up a hand. “I’m being quiet now.”

Despite the promise, Holden spends most of the first hour of the film commenting on everything from the landscape, to the score, to the plotline, asking numerous questions that Bill swats away with a reminder that if he would just watch the movie he would understand. 

The pizza box is cleaned out when the telephone on the nightstand begins to ring. 

Bill sighs, “I better get that. It could be Ted.”

“Do you want me to get it?” Holden asks. 

“No, it’s fine.”

Bill rolls off the bed, and swipes the receiver. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi, Bill. It’s me.” Nancy says, her voice crackling across the unsteady connection. 

“Oh, hi. Is something wrong?” He asks. 

He always gives her the number for the hotels where they stay in case she needs anything, but it’s been well over two years since she’s ever called for anything outside of an emergency. His pulse spikes upon hearing her voice, anticipating some kind of trouble that he’s not in a position to handle since he’s snowed in several thousand miles away from Fredericksburg. 

“No, nothing’s wrong.” She says. 

“Oh.” He says, “Then what’s up?” 

“Brian wanted to talk to you.” She says, “They had their Valentine’s Day party at school today, and he really enjoyed it.”

“Oh.” Bill says, again. He’d entirely forgotten about the holiday in between the case and the blizzard, though he’d not have remembered if he’d had the choice. 

“Here you go, sweetie.” Nancy says, her voice fading as she pulls the phone away from her ear. 

“Hi, Dad.” Brian’s voice whispers across the phone line. 

Bill cradles the telephone closer. “Hey, Bri.” 

“My teacher says we should all have a valentine.” Brian says, “Can you be mine?”

“Of course.” Bill says, pressing his eyes shut. Sudden emotion clutches the back of his throat, and he thinks he shouldn’t have forgotten about the holiday. Kids care about stupid shit like Valentine’s Day especially when a phone call every couple days is all they get from a parent. 

“Where are you?” Brian asks. 

“In Michigan.” Bill says, “I’m sorry I can’t be home right now. There’s a blizzard right now. You should see it - there’s a foot of snow on the ground right now.”

“A whole foot?”

“Yeah, maybe more.”

“I wish we had a foot of snow. Then I could have a snow day, and not go to school.”

Bill chuckles, “That would be the life, huh?”

Static shuffles across the line, and Bill hears Nancy’s voice distantly telling Brian to go do his homework now. There’s a faint protest that quickly dwindles at the commanding tone in Nancy’s voice. 

She clears her throat as she puts the phone back to her ear. “Sorry about that. We made a pact that he would do his homework if I let him call.”

“No problem at all.” Bill says, “He can call anytime he wants.”

“I know, it’s just … most of the time you’re so busy.”

“Nance, it’s not an inconvenience for me to talk to my son.” 

“Of course not.” She says, tersely. “There was, um … there was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

Bill rises from the edge of the bed as the tone of her voice sparks a frisson of anxiety through his chest. He cuts a glance over his shoulder at Holden who is sprawled out on the bed, intently watching the battle between John Wayne and the Comanches unfold. 

“What is it?” He asks, grabbing the telephone from the nightstand and carrying it around the corner to the bathroom. The cord stretches just far enough to allow him privacy and a layer of silence from the shouts and gunfire of the movie. 

“I meant to talk to you about this a few days ago, but then you got stuck up there.” She says, her voice knotted with trepidation. 

“Talk to me about what?” He presses, leaning his shoulder into the doorframe of the bathroom. In the dim light from the room, he can glimpse his reflection in the mirror, dark shadows almost concealing the fretful frown on his brow. 

“I don’t want you to be upset.” 

“Just tell me.”

A beat of silence across the line. He hears her draw in a deep breath. 

“I … have a date tonight.” 

Bill’s chest seizes, a ripple of shock followed by the grip of dread. His stomach drops, and he has to squeeze his fingers around the telephone to stop himself from dropping it. He stares at the grimy tiles of the bathroom floor in the semi-darkness, searching for a reply that doesn’t sound as unprepared as he feels. 

“Bill?” She whispers after a long moment. 

He clears his throat. “I, uh - that’s great.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.” He says, forcing ambivalence into his tone. “It’s been long enough, you know. You deserve to be happy.”

She lets out a quiet sigh. “Thank you. To be honest, I’m really scared. I’m not sure I remember how to do this.”

“Just be yourself.” Bill says, “And if he can’t see how great you are, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

“You don’t have to say that, you know.”

“I know I don’t. It’s just the truth.”

“Thanks, Bill.” She says, “And thank you for understanding.”

“Of course.”

“Okay … I’ll let you go.” 

“Okay. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Bill.” 

The dial tone buzzes in his ear, and he lets the receiver drop to his side. He’d meant what he said, but something small and sick curls itself around the pit of his stomach, a misery he can’t quell. The distance between him and home expands threefold in the space of a few seconds, an insurmountable gap that can’t be bridged with a few desperate whispers over a crackling phone line. 

Bill hoists the phone, and sets the receiver back in the cradle. Peeking around the corner into the motel room, he mutes a sigh behind the clench of his jaw. Holden is sitting up against the headboard, eyes glued to the television screen. Wayne’s character, Ethan, is seeing his missing niece for the first time in over five years, and everything has changed. 

Gathering the shattered pieces of his pride, Bill shuffles around the corner, and sets the phone back on the nightstand. 

Holden glances up from the riveting scene playing out on the screen. 

“What was that?” He asks. 

“Nancy.” Bill says, clearing his throat. 

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Bill says, mustering a faint smile. “Brian wanted to say hello.”

“Oh.” Holden says, his gaze lingering on Bill’s forced expression of nonchalance. 

Bill crawls back onto the bed, and leans back against the pillows beside Holden. His distracted gaze wanders from the movie to Holden’s profile dappled in the neon blues and yellows of the television light, his hair awry and uncombed, his jawline peppered with two day old stubble. 

Suddenly, Bill wants to reach out and touch him, if only to remind himself that not everything in his life is slipping beyond his grasp. He still has a few things, maybe just one or two; but in a second, this hotel doesn’t feel like a prison any longer, and he can ignore the snow trapping them here for the warmth radiating from Holden’s body beside him. 

On another day, Bill might have protested as the evening lengthened and Holden lingered in the bed beside him. Tonight, as the credits rolls across the screen, and one film begins where another ends, Holden sinks down against the pillows with heavy eyelids slipping shut, cheeks rosy with the intoxication of sleep; and Bill doesn’t find the will to snap at him to get back into his own bed, or to at least put a few inches of space between them. Instead, he lets his own body sink down against the pillows, down toward the radiating warmth of Holden’s body, down into dreams that escape far and wide from dismal reality. 

~

The motel is still and silent the next morning as sunlight dawns crisp and white against the piled, glittering snow. The thin curtains refract the blinding light into pewter streams across the faded, brown carpet, catching sailing dust motes in the air. 

Bill squints against the light as his body begins to move, limbs crawling laboriously from deep sleep to reacquaint with their surroundings. His body feels stiff, but in a good way like he’d slept deeply for the first time in weeks. His twitching fingers find their way across the lumps and curves concealed beneath the duvet, petting heavily against the shape of a leg that’s missing a connection to his own body. 

Bill’s eyes snap open as he shifts, and his knee hits Holden’s backside. 

Holden mutters a quiet groan, but burrows deeper beneath the bedsheets until only the chestnut curls on the crown of his head are visible. 

Bill sits upright as their position in the bed settles across his consciousness, draping the revolting parts of his brain in a cozy warmth that’s difficult to ignore. Holden is curled up on his side with his back to Bill, and Bill’s unconscious limbs had leaned instinctively towards him in the night. He wonders how long they were laying like that, cuddled together, bodies making every point of contact possible inside contented slumber. 

Throwing the sheets back, Bill shifts closer toward the edge of the bed. 

Holden's t-shirt is bunched up around his waist, leaving the pale strip of skin on his lower back visible above the waistband of his pajama pants. His skin is like cream in the bleached morning light, and the thought of touching him races across the back of Bill’s mind like a bolt of lightning. Maybe Holden wouldn’t wake up if he slipped his fingers under the hem of the shirt just for a moment, just to know what it feels like. He’d been practically laying on top of Holden only a moment ago. 

_ What the fuck?  _ Bill thinks, rubbing a hand over his face to dispel the thought. 

Swiping his cigarettes from the nightstand, Bill throws on a pair of trousers, and yanks the duvet off of the vacant bed. Wrapping the blanket around his shoulders, he slips his shoes on, and steps out of the motel room onto the sidewalk outside. 

The landscape is once again transformed beneath a virgin layer of snow, at least another three inches just like the forecast had predicted. He can see nothing but white for miles, all the way to the distant gray-blue shimmer of Lake Michigan where a narrow strip of clearance between the water and the gray skies offers a glimpse of clarity. Sunlight cuts past the puffy clouds which had been impenetrable only yesterday, a sign that the blizzard could be reaching its end. 

The eaves overhead had shielded the sidewalk from the fresh snowfall the night before, offering a shelter from the storm where a pair of plastic chairs arranged below the motel window are cold yet dry. 

Bill sinks down into one of the chairs with a heavy sigh. Tucking the blanket tightly beneath his chin, he slips one hand free of the fabric to light his cigarette. The smoke clouds thickly against the crisp air, rushing to compete with the icy prickle in his lungs. 

The nicotine seethes across his veins, soothing frayed nerves. Tilting his head back, he exhales smoke at the rusty, metal beams of the overhang. The cigarette is the only thing battling back the creeping cold seeping past the layers of the duvet, but he doesn’t want to go back inside. 

He sits there shuddering in the freezing air for a long time, smoking first one cigarette, then two, trying to get Brian and Nancy and Holden and his own loneliness of his out mind. That loneliness and his failures are his sole company these days outside of work and the occasional weekend visit with his son, a boy who is growing up before his eyes and when he isn’t looking, changing and getting taller every time he leaves town and comes back again. And somehow, he’d never thought that Nancy would move on, or even try to find someone else even though she deserves happiness, even though she deserves the world. He isn’t quite sure what he deserves, whether he’s earned something more noble because he’s put bad men behind bars, or if he deserves something bitter and cold because he’d never lived up to his own hopeful standard of family and fatherhood. 

Whether he deserves it or not, he’s getting left behind from the life he’d tried to build, his wife and son segmenting away into their own independence, and he isn’t sure what he’ll be left with. Waking up in hotel beds beside his partner? Taking that small bit of intimacy for himself that Holden might not have been consensually offering? Maybe those scraps of gratification are all he’ll ever get. 

Bill glances up sharply when the door of the motel room creaks open. 

Holden pokes his head out, disheveled curls dancing in the breath of cold air. 

“Good morning.” Bill says, taking a drag of his cigarette. 

“Good morning.” Holden says, rubbing his eyes against the sunlight reflecting off the snow. “What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”

“I just needed some air.” Bill says, “I feel like I’m gonna go crazy if I have to spend one more day in this motel.”

“The weather channel is saying the worst of it is over.” Holden says, nodding towards the television. “I’ll call the airport in a little bit.” 

“Christ, I hope so.” Bill says. 

Holden ducks back into the room, and Bill exhales a sigh. The tension in his chest gathers again, shuddering with a ferocity that’s innately disconnected from the cold. 

A minute later, the door swings open again. Holden exits the motel in his coat and scarf wrapped high around his chin and ears. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he sits down in the chair beside Bill with a shuddering exhale. 

“You don’t have to sit out here.” Bill says. 

“Yeah, I know.”

Silence stretches out between them, filled in by the occasional hollow echo of the wind. In the early morning, the town is so quiet and still that Bill can almost hear the surge of the Lake Michigan tide coming in, and it sounds like a distant escape that tempers his longing for home. 

Holden clears his throat, shattering the silence. “Is everything okay with you?”

“What do you mean?” Bill asks, focusing his gaze on snow melting into the cement grooves of the sidewalk. 

“You seemed upset after the phone call from Nancy last night.” Holden says, lifting his shoulders. “Maybe I’m wrong, but …”

Bill shakes his head, and flicks his cigarette back and forth between his fingers with his thumb. “It’s nothing, just-”

Holden shoots him a curious, yet gentle gaze. “What did she say?”

Bill shifts up in his chair, and takes a slow drag of his cigarette. The smoke clouding his lungs momentarily chases away the cold, but his insides are quivering again before the rush of nicotine dissipates. 

“Brian wanted to wish me Happy Valentine’s Day.” Bill says, “They had a party at school.”

“Oh.” Holden says, a confused frown knitting his brow. 

“I forgot.” Bill says, “It’s a stupid, fucking pointless holiday.”

Holden nods, slowly. “I forgot, too. We  _ do  _ have more important things to think about.” 

“Yeah, no shit.” Bill says, “We’re pulling dead bodies out of frozen lakes while he’s having a school party, and Nancy is …”

Silence again, only the sound of the wind. 

Bill closes his eyes. His cheeks are numb with the cold, but he can feel the seethe of heat traveling up his chest to bring life back to the wind-chapped skin. 

Holden doesn’t press for details. He sits quietly in the chair beside Bill, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his mouth tucked down against the blue knit of his scarf. 

Bill rubs his fingertips across his forehead, vainly attempting to massage away the frustration gathering in waves. 

“She told me has … she had a date last night.” He mutters. The cloud of his breath hangs in the cold air for a moment, preserving the honesty until it disappears into nothing again. 

“Oh.” Holden says, quietly.

“It’s fine, you know.” Bill says, pressing indifference into his voice. “I’m fine with it. The divorce happened two years ago. She’s free to do whatever she wants.”

“You mean that?” Holden asks, his gaze landing skeptically on Bill. 

“Doesn’t matter if I do or not.” Bill scoffs, “I don’t have any say in it, do I?” 

Holden’s mouth purses, teeth tucking against his lower lip. “You know, Bill, I think it’s okay to be upset. You were married for a long time, and now she’s moving on.”

“Yeah, she’s moving on while I’m still sitting here trying to figure out where everything went so fucking wrong.” Bill says, leaning forward to brace his elbows against his knees. 

The sidewalk under his feet blurs for a moment, and he presses his eyes shut, fighting back the wave of desolation opening up in his chest. Dropping his spent cigarette to the ground, he crushes the dwindling ashes beneath his heel, and grinds them into the sidewalk. 

“How do you think Brian feels?” Holden asks. 

“Who the fuck knows?” Bill says, shaking his head. “On a good day, he’s wishing me Happy Valentine’s Day. On a bad one, I can’t get him to speak two words to me.”

“He’s a smart kid, though.” Holden says, “I think he knows who his real dad is.”

Bill’s gaze careens up from the sidewalk to meet Holden’s. 

“That’s what scares you, isn’t it?” Holden asks, softly. “Some other man replacing you?”

Bill clenches his jaw. His eyes sting again, and he blinks against it, blaming the burn on the unforgiving wind. 

“No.” He says, quietly. “What scares me is how easy it would be.” 

Holden frowns, a question looming in his eyes. 

“I convinced myself it was what I wanted - that I wanted a family as much as Nancy did.” Bill says, exhaling a small, choked laugh. “Now that it’s all over and done with, I’m not sure how much I really tried.”

“I’m sure you did the best that you could.”

“I don’t know.” Bill says, “I don’t know anything anymore, Holden.” 

Rising from the chair, Bill tugs the duvet tighter around his shoulders, and nods towards the hotel. “Come on, we should go back in. I’m freezing my ass off.”

Holden gets up to follow him, but stops suddenly with his gaze caught on the distant teal strip of Lake Michigan emerging from the white haze of snow. 

“You slept beside me last night.” He says, his voice a raspy whisper just above the groan of the wind. 

Bill stops, his chest tightening with trepidation. He hadn’t thought they would talk about it. He’d thought maybe it could happen, and they would move on. But he should have remembered that this is Holden, and Holden can’t let things go, not even when it’s in his best interest. 

Holden turns to cast Bill a tremulous gaze. His eyes are vivid blue against the blanket of white, his cheeks rosy pink from the kiss of frigid air. Bill can’t focus on anything other than the quiver of his lower lip, his tongue darting anxiously against the chapped seam. 

“Holden-” He begins, some feeble protest forming in between the jumble of need and longing in his chest. 

“It was nice, right?” Holden says, “I thought it was.” 

Bill hesitates for a moment before allowing, “Sure.”

Holden licks his lips, and cuts a glance at the hazy outline of the water. “One time when I was like twelve years old, when my family was living in Milwaukee, I jumped in Lake Michigan. It was winter time just like this.”

“You did?” 

“Yes.” 

Bill frowns. “What’s your point?” 

“Nobody dared me to do it.” Holden says, “I just wanted to prove to myself that I could.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I just wanted to.” Holden says, his gaze shifting slowly back to Bill’s, “I’ve never been so cold in my life, but at the same time, I’d never felt so alive. I can’t explain it.”

Bill takes a shuffling step backwards as Holden closes the space between them, his gait slow yet determined. The wind dies down, the air going cold and still. Holden’s shoes crunch across the crusted layer of salt laid down on the sidewalk before coming to a stop a few inches from Bill’s. He reaches out a slow hand, fingers pale and trembling in the cold, to brush up against Bill’s knuckles. 

“It was a risk.” He whispers, “Dangerous … just like this.”

Bill swallows hard as Holden lifts his chin, eyes rising like the tide to swallow him. 

Holden leans in carefully, eyes following Bill’s for a moment before breaking off to concentrate on his cold, trembling lips. 

Bill thinks of protesting for a shriveling moment, but the thought dies with the hot gust of Holden’s breath on his cheeks. His chest pushes into Bill’s, and the contact ripples hotly through Bill’s limbs, an introductory matchstick that ignites with the chilled yet soft graze of Holden’s lips against his own. 

Holden’s mouth nudges against Bill’s, a trembling series of hesitations that could hardly be called a kiss. A shaky exhale punctuates the air between them as he leans his forehead against Bill’s, biting anxiously at his damp lower lip. 

Bill’s heart is thundering as he reaches up to cradle Holden’s cheek, fingers curling around his nape to gently guide him in closer. Their noses brush, eyes opening to glimpse one another gradually succumbing to the idea while their clouded breaths mingle in the scant space between them. 

Holden clutches at Bill’s chest, fingers knotting in the fluffy fabric of the duvet before slipping inside, past the neckline of his undershirt. His chilled fingers warm instantly against the skin where Bill’s pulse is stampeding, blood rushing hot and needy against the cold air cradling their huddling embrace. 

Bill thumbs at Holden’s cheek where a blush is spreading. “You’re right … this is dangerous.” He chokes out. 

Holden closes his eyes momentarily, and his tongue darts nervously across his lower lip. Bill watches it smear saliva across pink skin, feels a pit of need open up in his belly that rivals the width of Lake Michigan at their backs. 

“I feel alive. Don’t you?” Holden whispers, nudging closer to him. 

Bill clutches at Holden’s waist, maintaining the scarce inches between them for a trembling second longer before dragging Holden in against him. 

Holden’s mouth opens just before Bill kisses him, and immediately the contact lunges from shuddering trepidation to fierce desperation. Bill’s mouth drags hard and hungry across Holden’s, tasting his trembling lips before sweeping his tongue inside where his mouth is slick and hot, so hot against the cold wind. A groan surges up Holden’s throat, vibrating against the pressure of Bill’s mouth coming down in a long, hard strokes. He tastes sweet and tangy, like the burst of an orange breaking beneath Bill’s teeth, exploding open across his senses, making him hungry for more. Bill clutches Holden’s nape, forcing his head back as their mouths collide harder, his lips and tongue searching for more, insatiable. Holden submits, tongue quivering yet compliant beneath the graze of Bill’s, lips laying plump and pliant against the vicious suckle and scrape of Bill’s mouth. He opens his lips for more each time, whining softly, helpless kitten whimpers that makes Bill’s blood burn, his head swim with weightless need. 

He almost entirely forgets the cold and snow until he distractedly loses his grip on the duvet, and the blanket collapses from his shoulders. He gasps quietly in shock, his mouth coming away from Holden’s sharply as the cold air hits his bare arms and shoulders. 

Holden leans heavily into his chest, eyes slipping open to regard Bill's from beneath heavy lids. He’s panting softly, his cheeks bright pink. Bill wants to kiss every inch of him, to see if his skin is as sweet as his mouth, to answer some need inside himself that had lain dormant until only moments ago. 

“Fuck, it’s cold.” Bill says, reaching down to retrieve the blanket. “Let’s go in.”

Holden manages a choked laugh. “Okay.”

Bill stumbles past the door, realizing his knees are shaking. Holden is on his heels, shedding out of his coat and his scarf as soon as the door is shut behind them. The coat is sliding free of his wrists as Bill turns to press him up against the door, smothering him in another kiss. Holden leans into the embrace, muttering a soft groan. 

By the time they stagger to the bed, the lingering cold on Holden’s skin has melted away into radiating heat. Bill pins him to the sheets as his mouth journeys lower and lower, stripping fabric away as he encounters it, planting kisses deeply in every curve and shudder. 

He wonders if this is what leaping into the waves of Lake Michigan feels like; or if this just feels like moving on, like finding a new home, the four walls of Holden’s arms and chest around him, head over his head, mouth around the lock on his front door that had refused passage to anyone for so long. Maybe this risk wasn’t really such a risk after all, but a gradual letting go, waking up in the morning to see that the world has changed and it’s time to let the sunlight in again even if the air is still cold and cruel. Somewhere inside, the warmth is inviting him to live again. 


End file.
